No More Learning

"

This is followed (pp. 1-3) by: "A Description of the Kings [sic] of
Fayries Clothes, brought to him on New-Yeares day in the morning, 1626,
by his Queenes Chambermaids:--

"First a cobweb shirt, more thin
Than ever spider since could spin.
Changed to the whiteness of the snow,
By the stormy winds that blow
In the vast and frozen air,
No shirt half so fine, so fair;
A rich waistcoat they did bring,
Made of the Trout-fly's gilded wing:
At which his Elveship 'gan to fret
The wearing it would make him sweat
Even with its weight: he needs would wear
A waistcoat made of downy hair
New shaven off an Eunuch's chin,
That pleased him well, 'twas wondrous thin.
The outside of his doublet was
Made of the four-leaved, true-loved grass,
Changed into so fine a gloss,
With the oil of crispy moss:
It made a rainbow in the night
Which gave a lustre passing light.
On every seam there was a lace
Drawn by the unctuous snail's slow pace,
To which the finest, purest, silver thread
Compared, did look like dull pale lead.
His breeches of the Fleece was wrought,
Which from Colchos Jason brought:
Spun into so fine a yarn
No mortal wight might it discern,
Weaved by Arachne on her loom,
Just before she had her doom.
A rich Mantle he did wear,
Made of tinsel gossamer.
Beflowered over with a few
Diamond stars of morning dew:
Dyed crimson in a maiden's blush,
Lined with humble-bees' lost plush.
His cap was all of ladies' love,
So wondrous light, that it did move
If any humming gnat or fly
Buzzed the air in passing by,
About his neck a wreath of pearl,
Dropped from the eyes of some poor girl,
Pinched, because she had forgot
To leave clean water in the pot. "

The next page is occupied by a woodcut, and then (pp. 5, misnumbered 4,
and 6) comes the variation on Herrick's "Oberon's Feast":--

"A DESCRIPTION OF HIS DIET.

"Now they, the Elves, within a trice,
Prepared a feast less great than nice,
Where you may imagine first,
The Elves prepare to quench his thirst,
In pure seed pearl of infant dew
Brought and sweetened with a blue
And pregnant violet; which done,
His killing eyes begin to run
Quite o'er the table, where he spies
The horns of watered butterflies,
Of which he eats, but with a little
Neat cool allay of cuckoo's spittle.
Next this the red-cap worm that's shut
Within the concave of a nut.
Moles' eyes he tastes, then adders' ears;
To these for sauce the slain stags' tears,
A bloated earwig, and the pith
Of sugared rush he glads him with.
Then he takes a little moth,
Late fatted in a scarlet cloth,
A spinner's ham, the beards of mice,
Nits carbonadoed, a device
Before unknown; the blood of fleas,
Which gave his Elveship's stomach ease.
The unctuous dew-laps of a snail,
The broke heart of a nightingale
O'ercome in music, with the sag
And well-bestrutted bee's sweet bag.
Conserves of atoms, and the mites,
The silk-worm's sperm, and the delights
Of all that ever yet hath blest
Fairy-land: so ends his feast. "

On the next page is printed: "Orpheus. Thrice excelling, for the
finishment of this Feast, thou must music it so that the Deities may
descend to grace it. " This is succeeded by a page bearing a woodcut,
then we have "The Fairies Fegaries," a poem occupying three more pages
followed by another woodcut, and then "The Melancholly Lover's Song,"
and a third woodcut. The occurrence of the _Melancholy Lover's Song_
(the well-known lines beginning: "Hence all you vain delights") in print
in 1635 is interesting, as I believe that _The Nice Valour_, the play in
which they occur, was not printed till 1647, and Milton's _Il
Penseroso_, which they suggested, appeared in 1645. But the verses are
rather out of place in the little Fairy-Book.




APPENDIX III.

POOR ROBIN'S ALMANACK.


Herrick's name has been so persistently connected with _Poor Robert's
Almanack_ that a few words must be said on the subject. There is, we are
told, a Devonshire tradition ascribing the _Almanack_ to him, and this
is accepted by Nichols in his _Leicestershire_, and "accredited" by Dr.
Grosart. The tradition apparently rests on no better basis than
Herrick's Christian name, and of the poems in the issues of the
_Almanack_ which I have seen, it may be said, that, while the worst of
them, save for some lack of neatness of turn, might conceivably have
been by Herrick--on the principle that if Herrick could write some of
his epigrams, he could write anything--the more ambitious poems it is
quite impossible to attribute to the author of the _Hesperides_. But
apart from opinion, the negative evidence is overwhelming. Of the three
earliest issues in the British Museum, 1664, 1667 and 1669 (all in the
annual collections of Almanacs, issued by the Stationers' Company, and
all, it may be noted, bound for Charles II. ), I transcribe the
title-page of the first.